Look at this chart: it purports to show the percentage of ‘born-again’ Christians who abandon their faith after attending various categories of colleges. My first thought was, “Good, now how can we get those numbers higher?”; I’m sure that most fundies feel what the author of the chart intended, absolute horror at the idea that sending kids to college is the equivalent of shipping them off to an eternity of hellfire.
I get the impression that Sam Harris didn’t like Francis Collins’ book:
If one wonders how beguiled, self-deceived and carefree in the service of fallacy a scientist can be in the United States in the 21st century, “The Language of God” provides the answer. The only thing that mitigates the harm this book will do to the stature of science in the United States is that it will be mostly read by people for whom science has little stature already. Viewed from abroad, “The Language of God” will be seen as another reason to wonder about the fate of American society. Indeed, it is rare that one sees the thumbprint of historical contingency so visible on the lens of intellectual discourse. This is an American book, attesting to American ignorance, written for Americans who believe that ignorance is stronger than death. Reading it should provoke feelings of collective guilt in any sensitive secularist. We should be ashamed that this book was written in our own time.
Just out of curiousity, has anyone seen a positive review of this book? The closest thing to it I’ve seen is David Klinghoffer’s, which is an interesting example of conflicted evasion: he tries so hard to praise Collins’ piety, but at the same time, Collins rips into ID…and Klinghoffer is a Discovery Institute fellow. His response is to get all soppy about the religion, but at the end to recommend some other book that tangles up religion and science, presumably without any ID bashing.
I’ve said it a few times now: I’m with Harris. Collins’ thinking is very unimpressive and embarrassingly shallow, and yet he’s trading on his reputation as a scientist to evangelize for theological nonsense. Personally, I think he’s setting back the idea of reconciling faith and reason a few centuries—I just don’t see how you can read his tripe without seeing it as clear evidence that religion rots your brain.
Oy, the company atheists keep…
Over at the Panda’s Thumb, there is a sharp rebuttal of the creationists’ complaint about junk DNA. Read it, it’s useful. It leads to a bothersome and more general point, though.
Collins has another published interview in Salon. It’s sad, actually—in every new interview, he says pretty much the same thing, but he digs himself in a little deeper. I ordered his book the other day, and now I’m beginning to regret it; it’s beginning to sound like trite Christian apologetics with no depth, no self-reflection, no insight…just compound anecdotes intended to rationalize a conclusion he has arrived at with no evidence. It’s distressingly anti-scientific.
For instance, we get an expansion of his hiking anecdote:
Let’s start the week with another open thread, and a few carnivals.
Jim Lippard has dug up a bizarre animated summary of Mormon theology that was put together by some other religious group to debunk them. I know that at least some bits and pieces of the cartoon are accurate, but I can’t judge the whole thing—I can tell you that religion looks pretty ridiculous when you explain its basic tenets with cheesy animation. Can we get a whole set of these made for Catholicism, Islam, Lutheranism, the Baptists, etc.?
I don’t think it would cost much. From the look of the Mormon story, maybe $9.99 each.
Here’s a picture of Mormon heaven.
Looks just like Utah.
There’s some new movie out about religious indoctrination, reviewed by David Byrne.
Saw a screening of a documentary called Jesus Camp. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears. Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)
This is a new low: if you read this post by a fellow atheist, you’ll see a critical comment by “PZ Myers.” Thing is, it wasn’t me.
I guess we’ve got some cowardly kook wandering about, leaving comments with my name stuck on them, in an attempt to simultaneously annoy others and discredit me. Nice. If anyone else is getting what seem to be out-of-character comments from me, let me know…it would also be good if you had a way to let me know the IP address of the imposter.
In a related situation, read this story about a fake ‘atheist’ blog purporting to label the good, the bad, and the ugly atheists (no, I’m not mentioned in any of the categories)—it reeks of astroturf.
What an excellent demonstration of the importance of the principle of the separation of church and state: here’s a conservative Christian minister whose views on society and politics I find thoroughly odious; here’s a liberal Christian with whom I’d be 99% in agreement, but whose moderate religious views I can still find a bit batty; and then there’s me, the flaming atheist. We can all coexist and work together (or against each other, in a productive and civil way) as long as our government doesn’t arbitrarily privilege one religious view over another. As long as we can find common ground in our support for civil liberties and personal freedom to believe as we want, it really doesn’t matter what goofy ideas about gods we might have.
By the way, while you’re over at Making Light, don’t miss Jim Macdonald’s article on heat stress. We’re supposed to get up close to 100°F here in western Minnesota today, with high humidity and threats of thunderstorms—so it’s certainly timely information.
